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Famous Sports Mustache Is Going ... Going ... Gray

Shades of gray showed up in Keith Hernandez's mustache in 2008, but a sponsor agreement mandated that the color return.Credit
Barton Silverman/The New York Times

Keith Hernandez’s mustache has rarely left its perch below his nose in his adult life. It is the thicker, longer cousin to his eyebrows, the hirsute geometric center of his face. His mustache is an entity and a signature. After years of renown, it was voted the top sports mustache of all time in a survey by the American Mustache Institute in 2007.

But now, the Hernandez mustache might have a month of life left in it.

He announced the possibility of shaving it last week on a Mets broadcast. But Hernandez, 58, said Monday that he might simply show up for the Mets’ final game of the season, on Oct. 3, with nothing but bare skin between his nose and upper lip.

“I don’t want to draw attention to it,” he said by telephone from his home in Jupiter, Fla. “I’ll do it, and whoever’s watching the game will see it.”

It would be like Groucho Marx showing up without his greasepaint mustache in “Horse Feathers,” or Tom Selleck appearing without his furry friend in “Magnum, P.I.”

Hernandez’s mustache faithfully accompanied him through nearly all of his baseball career, his guest appearances on “Seinfeld” and his singing duet with Mookie Wilson on “Put Down the Duckie” for Sesame Street.

Still, he seems about to take it off, after a long season of letting it turn increasingly gray. The color has been fading longer than that but was artificially enhanced with Just for Men gel. He was, of course, a paid company endorser and a star, with Walt Frazier, of several kitschy TV commercials that suggested a better life through dyed facial hair.

In the first and most famous ad, Hernandez and Frazier played the bar-side analysts of a sad sack Mr. Graybeard being rejected by Miss Hottie. Their facial hair was blindingly dark. “No play for Mr. Gray,” Frazier said, evoking his penchant for rhyming.

But Combe Inc., which makes Just for Men, ended the campaign early this year and replaced it with one that stars a tuxedoed baby. Having gone gray in apparent warp speed, the baby sports a dyed goatee as he drives a sports car and enters a swank club with a (much taller) hottie.

“They said our ads were stale and wanted to go in another direction,” Hernandez said.

Hernandez once kept a stockpile of Just for Men to comply with his contract, which said he had to appear on-air fully dyed. Two executives monitored Mets games to be sure he did not turn into Mr. Gray. He still has a few boxes left, but he isn’t using it.

The result is visible: with each passing Mets broadcast on SNY, the mustache has grown considerably grayer. Sometimes the mustache is more interesting than the game.

“I’d grow it out and it wasn’t very mature so I’d shave it off and grow it back again,” he said. “I did that for three years.”

In 1977, bowing to the edict against facial hair by St. Louis Cardinals Manager Vern Rapp, Hernandez shaved. The mustache returned and it was featured, with the rest of its owner, on the cover of Sports Illustrated in the spring after he shared the 1979 National League Most Valuable Player award with Willie Stargell.

His whiskers were nearly as prominent as the two red cardinals on his jersey.

The mustache then arrived in New York with its owner in 1983 in a trade to the Mets.

At the time, Hernandez said that he had grown tired of grooming it. But on Monday he said, “I might have been coming off a slump.” Indeed, in the 10 games leading up to removing his whiskers, his batting average had fallen to .301 from .327.

He does not recall removing the mustache since, but he augmented it with a beard after he retired while renting a house one winter in Aspen.

He would not say how long he would keep the mustache off if he indeed shaved it. He recalled getting accustomed to being without it when Rapp banned facial hair like his.

Still, he would not mind if Just for Men sent the goateed baby to his crib and summoned him for hair-dyeing relief. Just give him a month to grow his mustache back.